Wow, great stuff Ribbiks. :)
Even with only a few dominant colors ( purple, brown and gray in some places ), you manage to create nice themes which don't get too repetitive.
Gameplay-wise, there are less monsters than Sunder indeed, yet the difficulty is quite extreme. I'm fond of your traps, you have some very nice and innovative fights here. :)

I'm on map 05 at the moment. Epic stuff, I love the clever interconnection between rooms ( as with the maps before it actually ). My only gripe with it is that ammo seems very scarce ( unlike on the previous maps ), I'd just feel more comfortable with more Shells in maps like this. I like tough fights, but ammo starvation is far from my definition of "fun".

Anyway, I can't wait to try the remaining maps :)
This wad will be a major highlight of 2013 to me.
Insane_Gazebo must feel proud, his minions are breeding like crazy. ;)

As a masterful masochist, I say no. I prefer playing things the way they are meant to be played by author even if they're downright sadistic. The funny thing is that this project keeps haunting me and I can't just drop it, so I'll most likely persist. You'll hit the apple if you call me an aesthetics junkie.

Honestly speaking I pretty much agree that it's an outstanding project for this year, there are very little out there that could interest me somehow, mostly vanilla garbage and questionable experimentations. Though something tells me that DD-style gameplay could easily prevent it from getting wide recognition, it's still pretty much a niche set and it does even beat conventional slaughtermaps in terms of brutality.

...Still scarce ammo supplies sucks.

[WH]-Wilou84 said:Insane_Gazebo must feel proud, his minions are breeding like crazy. ;)

I see little resemblance to Sunder rather than multiple switches in a single room that reveal themselves one by one for a long time while player is busy with hordes. Other than that - this is a completely different matter imo.

Demonologist said:
Though something tells me that DD-style gameplay could easily prevent it from getting wide recognition, it's still pretty much a niche set and it does even beat conventional slaughtermaps in terms of brutality.

oh yeah, I knew that going into it. To be honest I find most traditional doom gameplay boring (iwad style, lots of low tier hitscan enemies, etc) so I deemed it more important to make something I found personally enjoyable, especially if I was going to be spending so much time on it. I'm willing to make changes to broaden the audience, which is why HMP was implemented in the first place, but I guess it doesn't do it any good if people refuse to play it :p. I understand your reasoning, because I do the same thing, but UV doesn't fuck around, which brings me to:

...Still scarce ammo supplies sucks.

running out of ammo means you're doing something wrong, deviating from intended strategies. This is a perfectly allowable offense on HMP, where you have enough ammo to pick off enemies 1 at a time, but on UV that doesn't fly. The tight ammo balance was to try and force agressive play and/or instigate additional infighting, or momentarily skip enemies that aren't immediate threats. Take j4's map03 demo for example ^^ straight ownage and he had plenty of ammo throughout :)

I see little resemblance to Sunder rather than multiple switches in a single room that reveal themselves one by one for a long time while player is busy with hordes. Other than that - this is a completely different matter imo.

Sunder had a decent influence of some of the ways I approach detailing, so there's a bit of a connection there for sure.

@ Demonologist : What I meant is this : even if the monster count isn't as high as in the later Sunder maps, some Sunder elements are clearly recognizable in Stardate 20X6 :

- "Switch -> Tough fight -> Switch -> Tough fight" gameplay style
- The player is often trapped and locked in fight zones, whether by bars or walls etc.
- Timed switches, timed monster spawning sequences
- Exiting a trap requires finding two or more switches and wait for them to appear while dealing with monsters
- Infighting is mandatory in some of the fights
- Some maps in Stardate 20X6 feature these damn pole-jumping sequences which immediately evoke Sunder map 10, hair loss and tears of rage
- Most maps end with an arena fight, usually way harder than most of the map's battles, and in which you're locked in
- The BFG9000 isn't featured much, you have to rely on the Plasma Gun / RL / SSG to deal with large number of enemies, which makes things quite hard
- Some texture themes are reminiscent of Sunder ( maps 02 and 03 could look like Sunder map 13, also I think the trap in sector 59 in map 07 is a tribute to some tower trap in Sunder map 14 )
- There are next to no "filler moment" between the fights, almost every new room features a deadly trap

Not that I'm complaining of course, I really like this wad, and was just pointing out that I feel there's some kind of legacy being carried over between Sunder, Combat Shock ( and its sequel ), and now this. Just my two cents though.
Ribbiks' maps here are still very different from said wads, and bring many new things to the table. Stardate feels more interconnected, and with more route choices in the maps themselves.

I've played map 07, and it was truly fantastic. On to map 31 :)
Cool music choices, too.

Ribbiks said:
oh yeah, I knew that going into it. To be honest I find most traditional doom gameplay boring (iwad style, lots of low tier hitscan enemies, etc) so I deemed it more important to make something I found personally enjoyable, especially if I was going to be spending so much time on it. I'm willing to make changes to broaden the audience, which is why HMP was implemented in the first place, but I guess it doesn't do it any good if people refuse to play it :p.

I agree about traditional gameplay, though it seems that we enjoy slightly different stuff (to make things clear - I picked wads like Vanguard and Lunatic to be pretty much ideal for me gameplay-wise). Not to say that I ignore trial and error maps, it's all about challenge after all. And I've already said that I found your work attractive on some sensual level, so I may be bitching about it (we're here discussing things after all, aren't we?), but I actually like it even if it hits hard. And starting with map04 I tend to like it a bit more.

Ribbiks said:
running out of ammo means you're doing something wrong, deviating from intended strategies. This is a perfectly allowable offense on HMP, where you have enough ammo to pick off enemies 1 at a time, but on UV that doesn't fly. The tight ammo balance was to try and force agressive play and/or instigate additional infighting, or momentarily skip enemies that aren't immediate threats. Take j4's map03 demo for example ^^ straight ownage and he had plenty of ammo throughout :)

Well, maybe. Ironic, some time ago our 'reluctant ammo supplier' Shadowman claimed that I am a resourceful player who literally counts his bullets and manages to survive even with extremely scarce supplies around, looks like I'm starting to lose this ability. Getting old, all that... Though I actually rarely run out of ammo completely here, but often close enough to it.

Ribbiks said:
Sunder had a decent influence of some of the ways I approach detailing, so there's a bit of a connection there for sure.

Heh, well, I see that it has influenced many.

[WH]-Wilou84 said:list

Okay, maybe. Though I think that Sunder brought little new in terms of gameplay templates, to me it's rather controversial wad. Not because of its difficulty, I don't find it as frustratingly hard as people usually claim it to be. It's a combination of cool artistic concepts (not all of them though, I find some of those to be pretty mediocre, even ugly) and too heavy usage of cannon fodder. Of course it has some interesting fights, but most of the time everything just drowns in zounds of bastards that just take too long to lay down. Not much fun for me, I guess everyone remembers that rev/HK & manc horde on map10, tedious as hell.
And Stardate is like the other side of the coin, of course it has some slaughtery moments but most of the time it tends to mutilate with sadistically clever placement and rare supplies while keeping relatively low monster count. Much like Skepland did, for example (though skep's stuff is still harder). That's the point.

cool, nice to see the disco dungeon getting released at last. I had a go on continuous HMP because I am a bloody coward, but it made for some very pleasant saturday afternoon killing. Lovely looking maps too. Sometimes I got a bit lost looking for whatever new path was opened up by the previous switch but nothing worth complaining about.

I kind of liked the novelty of the purple bfg and arach plasma at first, but I decided to revert them to their original green. I've already made these changes and they'll be released with the next revision of the beta.

I enjoyed playing this but by Jove it's hard going. This FDA, which is on HNTR (bet you don't have one of these yet), has more false starts than an orgy of premature ejaculators.

I like the way groups of monsters are thrown at the player and there's a sweet mix of cramped, corridor panic and open-area havoc. The map flows nicely and the detailing is intricate yet subtle. I'm also getting a taste of oak leaves and cinnamon with a hint of wild berries.

I like how the doomguy slide at the end made it look like some fancy deathcam work. :)

Dunno if it's my place to say, but you might have a better time on ITYTD on later maps, it all gets pretty aggressive. As I recall, Ribbiks figured the double HP/ammo of ITYTD would do the trick if HMP was too hard, and compared to that difficulty HNTR only has very minor adjustements on areas that might still prove to be a challenge even with the double HP/ammo. So the way I see it, ITYTD is really the "true" HNTR for this mapset.

Haha! It's ok dude, my feelings are intact :) "I played on HNTR and I'm not ashamed." But your advice is good, I may drop down to skill 1 but I fear that all the rockets and health in the world ain't going to save me from that finale. As a great man once said: It's all in the reflexes. And mine went a long time ago.

Sorry, I phrased it poorly :) I meant to imply Ribbiks knows best, and that my interpretation of his intent isn't anything more than personal opinion. I play on ITYTD every now and then and I'm not ashamed either!

I saw a screenshot with a room filled with revenants, not my taste.. but I will still try this, at least once, when it is done.

doomers and their revophobia :p. The last couple maps have some straightup slaughter-style encounters, but most of the mapset shouldn't be too bad on lower difficulties.

Phml's post is pretty much correct, the half-damage/double-ammo of ITYTD may make some levels playable for more folks. There are some areas though, if not handled sensibly, where it won't really matter how much health/ammo you're given, but in the very least I'd encourage a godmode of nomo playthrough :)

Fixed a gazillion little bugs, mostly affecting multiplayer. Corrected everything mentioned in this thread, plus plenty of other things I noticed. A few balance and detailing changes were made as well.

Additional thanks to Pottus, Watakid, and a few other nice folks in Zandro for playing through pretty much the entire wad and helping me balance MP, as well as finding 1001 ways to break each map :)

Unless I find something gamebreaking in the next couple days, this will likely be the wad that gets uploaded to /idgames.